Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
The compelling case for a future fund for social housing
Brendan Coates The Conversation (No paywall)As more and more Australians are forced into private renting, including Australians who once would have owned homes or lived in social housing, more are living in poverty, suffering financial stress and becoming homeless. Social housing – where rents are typically capped at 25% of tenants’ incomes – used to make a big difference to the lives of many vulnerable Australians. ... But the stock of social housing – currently around 430,000 dwellings – has barely grown in 20 years, during a time Australia’s population has grown 33%.
https://theconversation.com/the-compelling-case-for-a-future-fun…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Affordable housing, Federal Government, Housing market.Rental Affordability Index reveals the cost of rent now skyrocketing in some Queensland regions
Jessica Stewart ABC (No paywall)A Sunshine Coast family forced to live out of a caravan are among thousands feeling the brunt of a rental market experts believe is "approaching the point of catastrophe." The latest annual report based on the Rental Affordability Index (RAI) reveals there has been a significant decline in affordability across some regions in Queensland, with the cost of rent now skyrocketing. RAI creator Adrian Pisarski said the new data showed a "pretty dire situation". ... Mr Pisarski said the situation would only get worse, not better, without significant intervention from the federal and state governments. "I think we've been in a crisis for quite a long time and, you know, we're approaching a situation of catastrophe, especially for people like pensioners and people on JobSeeker," he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-26/rai-rental-market-approac…
# Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Housing affordability, State Government.Accessible housing: disabled people left behind by ‘shameful’ building code stance in NSW, WA and SA
Stephanie Convey The Guardian (No paywall)Disabled Australians are being left behind in three major states after governments failed to make minimum accessibility standards mandatory for new houses, disability advocates say. New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia say they will opt out of clauses in the forthcoming revised National Construction Code (NCC) that would require all new buildings to have basic accessibility features such as at least one step-free entrance, a toilet on the entry level, and reinforced walls in the bathroom. These features and others, such as a walk-in shower recess and wider door frames and corridors to facilitate ease of movement, were added to the NCC earlier this year after a push from advocates highlighting the difficulties disabled people have in finding homes that meet their basic needs.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/26/accessibl…
# Australia, Disability, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.We identified who’s most at risk of homelessness and where they are. Now we must act, before it’s too late
Deb Batterham, Christian A. Nygaard, Jacqueline De Vries and Margaret Reynolds The Conversation (No paywall)Homelessness is traumatic. It affects not just housing arrangements but whether or not someone can get enough food, feel safe and maintain relationships with friends and family. The physical and mental health effects often persist long after people are rehoused, and the community and government costs are high. Much of the current response to homelessness is focused on supporting people after they become homeless or just before they do so. However, to really reduce homelessness we need to prevent those at risk from ever becoming homeless in the first place. ... In our study, people were considered at risk of homelessness if they lived in rental housing and were experiencing at least two of the following: low income; vulnerability to discrimination in the housing or job markets; low social resources and supports; needing support to access or maintain a living situation due to significant ill health, disability, mental health issues or problematic alcohol and/or drug use; rental stress (when lower-income households put more than 30% of income towards housing costs). From here, it often doesn’t take much to tip those at risk into actual homelessness. You can read the AHURI news release at: [https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/news/Between-1.5-and-2-million-Australian-renters-at-risk-of-homelessness-report]. You can read the full report at: [https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/370]
https://theconversation.com/we-identified-whos-most-at-risk-of-h…
# Australia, Rent, Health, Homelessness.'Astounding’: Aged care providers to get immunity from prosecution
Dana Daniel The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Aged care providers will get immunity from criminal or civil prosecution for using physical and chemical restraints after the federal government amended its aged care bill, prompting outrage from advocates for older Australians. ... Aged Care Matters director Sarah Russell said the amendment would deprive aged care residents of “the civil and criminal protections to which all other Australians are entitled” and urged senators to vote against it. “If a member of the public is restrained without their consent, the perpetrator can be charged,” she said. “In contrast, an aged care resident who is restrained without their consent will have no legal recourse.” Read the same story entitled: 'Amended dignity: our elders denied their human rights again' by Sarah Russell at: [https://www.michaelwest.com.au/amended-dignity-our-elders-denied-their-human-rights-again/]
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/astounding-aged-care-pro…
# Australia, Federal Government, Health, Older people.The glorification of greed has left Sydney with a vast backlog of misery
Elizabeth Farrelly The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)For years, we’ve watched buildings drop their concrete panels, flood without warning and burst into uncontrollable flame. Then, in 2019, after the whole Opal fiasco, a NSW Upper House inquiry chaired by Greens MLC David Shoebridge helped bring extra regulatory powers to Building Commissioner David Chandler and expedited legislation to license building practitioners and enhance enforcement of building codes. Between them, these new statutes will do some remarkable things. ... Further, the statutes give the commissioner extraordinary powers to scrutinise, audit and stop work on buildings under construction. All this, says Chandler, makes NSW the envy of other state regulators. That’s excellent and should work well, going forward. But there’s still a vast backlog of misery caused by some of the dodgiest buildings in our history: a perfect storm of sloppy border control allowing an influx of inferior materials, private certification, unregulated engineers, huge profits and neoliberal glorification of greed.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-glorification-of-greed-h…
# NSW, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.This Sydney strata nightmare started as a power struggle — then the police were called
Amy Greenbank ABC (No paywall)It's the stuff of Sydney strata nightmares: a cracking building, an expensive repair bill and an owners' meeting that got so heated the police turned up. The drama started in the basement of the Vicinity apartment towers in Canterbury earlier this month, when owners couldn't agree over who should be put in charge of managing the affairs of the troubled apartment block. The 10-storey development, which was finished in 2017 and includes 254 units, came under government scrutiny last month. Inspectors were sent in after an engineer's report, commissioned by owners, questioned the building's structural safety and documented cracks in the concrete slabs used to support the apartment towers. Within minutes of the extraordinary general meeting being opened on November 11, tempers flared. One concerned attendee called police, who warned they would shut the meeting down "if this thing does get out of hand". Video from the same meeting shows owners shouting and jeering at each other before officers arrived. The ABC understands animosity about the repairs, as well as a divide between investors and owner-occupiers has created the rift. ... Many of the strata disagreements stem from differences between the building's owner-occupiers and owner-investors. Owners living in the building say they want defects properly fixed, but some investors — who rent their apartments to tenants — are baulking at the cost of special levies and an ongoing court case against the developer, Toplace, fearing it will harm their prospects of selling.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-27/inside-sydney-strata-nigh…
# NSW, Strata, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Minimum habitability standards.New report calls on greater Commonwealth investment to curb public housing crisis
Heath Parkes-Hupton ABC (No paywall)The Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS) is calling on the federal government to step up its funding for new social and affordable housing projects to arrest a crisis fanned by ballooning rental prices across the country. A new ACOSS report to be released today has found more than 155,000 households are registered on social housing waitlists, with more than 400,000 households in need of affordable housing. You can read the ACOSS media release and find a link to the full report at: [https://www.acoss.org.au/media-releases/?media_release=states-housing-step-up-no-substitute-for-federal-action]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-29/new-report-details-austra…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Federal Government, Homelessness, Older people, Women.